Sep 30, 2026

DRI Annual Meeting 2026: AI, Insurance Defense & Sessions That Matter

Nader Karayanni

TL;DR: The DRI Annual Meeting 2026 runs October 21 to 23 at the Grand Hyatt Washington. newcase.ai will be attending at booth 404. For insurance defense leaders, the agenda points to one question: how firms deliver more value per billed hour as carriers and corporate clients push on rates. This guide covers the sessions worth your time and a 5-question scorecard for Thursday's AI Skills Lab. Purpose-built tools such as newcase.ai already automate the document-heavy work behind depositions and medical records, and the scorecard shows how to test any vendor on it.

Key Takeaways

DRI 2026 takes place October 21 to 23 at the Grand Hyatt Washington, 1000 H St NW. The exhibit hall opens Wednesday at 5:00 p.m.
Four main-stage and committee sessions speak directly to insurance defense economics: client buying behavior, GC expectations, life care planners, and mediation ethics.
The AI Skills Lab puts six interactive AI stations in front of attendees in three hours. Judge each one with the same five questions.
A tracking database recorded 524 instances of AI-generated false content in U.S. court filings in 2025 alone, so verification is a firm-level duty.
newcase.ai automates deposition summaries and medical chronologies with page-line citations on every finding. Visit us at our booth.

When and where is the DRI Annual Meeting 2026?

The DRI 2026 Annual Meeting runs Wednesday, October 21 through Friday, October 23, 2026, at the Grand Hyatt Washington, 1000 H St NW, Washington, DC. Leadership events start Monday, October 19. Main-stage CLE runs Thursday and Friday, and the exhibit hall is open Wednesday evening, Thursday morning, and Friday morning. (DRI FAQs)

The audience is the defense bar's decision layer: civil defense partners, in-house counsel, and claims professionals. That mix is why the hallway conversations matter as much as the CLE.

Which DRI 2026 sessions matter most for insurance defense firms?

Four sessions line up with the economic pressure insurance defense firms feel every day. We picked them for one reason: each one answers a question a managing partner is already asking. (full schedule)

How will clients buy legal services next? (Thursday, 1:00 p.m.)

Connie Brenton of LegalOps.com leads Value, Risk-Sharing & the New Client-Law Firm Model: How In-House Counsel Will Buy Legal Services in the Future. The session covers how AI, value-based pricing, risk-sharing, efficiency, transparency, and changing client expectations are reshaping how in-house teams buy legal services.

For insurance defense, this is the headline session. Many carrier billing guidelines cap or restrict what firms can charge for summaries, indexing, and records review. The firms that price confidently in 2027 will be the ones that know their true cost per task today.

What do GCs expect from outside counsel? (Thursday, 11:00 a.m.)

The Modern GC Playbook: Risk, Reputation, and Real-Time Decisions features Robyn Buck (Bayer), David Stringer (Progressive Insurance), and Christian Gonzalez (Fifth Third Bank). The session focuses on how in-house leaders make decisions around litigation strategy, law firm relationships, business objectives, and how they evaluate outside counsel and define value.

A carrier voice on the main stage is rare. Bring questions.

How should defense lawyers approach life care planners? (Wednesday, 3:00 p.m.)

The Product Liability and Retail and Hospitality committees host Life Care Planners: Practical Tips and Strategies. The session covers common red flags, deposition and trial strategies, and when to engage a life care planner early in a case, particularly when future treatment is already being discussed. The panel will also address the growing involvement of life care planners in medium- and large-exposure cases.

What changes at mediation after ABA Formal Opinion 518? (Wednesday, 3:00 p.m.)

The ADR and Insurance Law committees, with Susan Buckingham of Travelers on the panel, discuss mediator ethics and mediator's proposals following ABA Formal Opinion 518. Insurance defense lawyers spend a large share of their year in mediation, so the rules of that room deserve an hour.

Also worth a slot: the Law Practice Management Committee meeting (Friday, 8:00 a.m.), and Lena Sisco's session on deceptive analysis (Friday, 11:30 a.m.) for practical techniques applicable to depositions and witness interviews.

What is the DRI AI Skills Lab, and how should you evaluate it?

The AI Skills Lab runs Thursday from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. Attendees rotate through six 20-minute stations covering case analysis, real-time depositions, discovery, deposition prep, marketing, and case strategy. The stations are led by experienced practitioners and AI tool creators. The format is hands-on, fast, and useful.

Twenty minutes is enough time to be impressed and too little time to find the failure modes. That gap matters because the failure modes are well documented:

A peer-reviewed Stanford and Yale study found that leading AI legal research tools hallucinated between 17% and 33% of the time on its benchmark queries.
The Maryland State Bar Association, drawing on Damien Charlotin's tracking database, reports 1,240 instances of fabricated AI content in U.S. filings since April 2023, including 524 in 2025 alone with 97 monetary sanctions.
ABA Formal Opinion 512 makes lawyers responsible for understanding a tool's capabilities and limits, protecting client information, and verifying output.

A demo shows the best case. Your job is to find the worst case before your client does.

The 5-question AI scorecard for defense firms

Ask every vendor these five questions, including us. A strong tool answers each one specifically and without hesitation.

Question to ask	Why it matters for insurance defense	What a strong answer sounds like
1. Can I click any finding and land on the exact page and line?	Every fact in a report to a carrier has to survive scrutiny.	"Every finding links to the source page and line, and to the witness's exact words."
2. What happens to my data after processing?	Opinion 512 and carrier security audits both ask this question.	"Zero data retention, no training on your data, SOC 2 Type II, signed BAAs for medical records."
3. If I run the same records twice, do I get the same result?	Inconsistent output means nobody can rely on it across a panel.	"Yes, and we can show you the benchmark."
4. Did it read every page, and what does it do with pages it can't read?	A missed record in a 5,000-page file is a missed defense.	"Every page is processed. Illegible or uncertain content is flagged for human review."
5. Will my carrier clients approve and reimburse it?	Tools that fall outside billing guidelines become firm overhead.	"Here are the carriers that approve it, and how panel firms bill it."

For reference, here is how newcase.ai answers: page-line citations on every extracted fact, zero data retention across all AI processing, SOC 2 Type II compliance, and benchmarking across 100,000+ pages of depositions and medical records. One national carrier has approved newcase.ai as a reimbursable expense for its panel firms.

How is AI changing the economics of insurance defense work?

The leverage model that built many defense firms depended on associates billing hours on summaries, chronologies, and records review. Today, many carrier billing guidelines restrict or scrutinize this work, while firms are under pressure to deliver it more efficiently.

"Defense firms are under real pressure on rates," says Nader Karayanni, CEO of newcase.ai. "Our job is to take the document-heavy work off their plate so their attorneys can focus on strategy, and to do it in a way insurers can approve."

In practice, the workflow looks like this. Depositions and medical records arrive. Someone indexes them, summarizes each transcript, builds a chronology, and cross-checks the expert's prior testimony. Done manually, each step costs hours per file. newcase.ai runs these steps automatically: deposition summaries, medical chronologies, and expert witness investigation, each with page-line citations, at 15x the speed of manual review.

Where can I find newcase.ai at DRI 2026?

We are exhibiting a booth in the exhibit hall at the Grand Hyatt Washington. Exhibit hall hours:

Wednesday, October 21: 5:00 to 7:30 p.m. (including the Welcome Reception)
Thursday, October 22: 8:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Friday, October 23: 8:00 to 11:00 a.m.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is the DRI Annual Meeting 2026?

The DRI 2026 Annual Meeting runs from Wednesday, October 21 to Friday, October 23, 2026. Leadership and invitation-only events begin Monday, October 19. The main educational program, including the Senator Joe Manchin keynote and the AI Skills Lab, runs Thursday and Friday, with committee sessions and the Welcome Reception on Wednesday.

Where is the DRI 2026 Annual Meeting held?

The meeting is held at the Grand Hyatt Washington, 1000 H St NW, Washington, DC 20001. The Thursday evening networking reception takes place off-site at the International Spy Museum and is included with registration.

Is there AI programming at DRI 2026?

Yes. The AI Skills Lab on Thursday, October 22, from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m., rotates attendees through six hands-on stations covering case analysis, depositions, discovery, deposition prep, marketing, and case strategy. The stations are led by experienced practitioners and AI tool creators. A Wednesday committee session also covers avoiding AI pitfalls, and a Friday Center session covers emerging issues in AI and complex litigation.

How should insurance defense firms evaluate AI tools?

Test five things: page-line citations on every finding, data retention and security terms, consistency across repeated runs, coverage of every page with uncertain content flagged, and carrier approval under billing guidelines. ABA Formal Opinion 512 places verification and confidentiality duties on the lawyer, so a firm needs these answers in writing before rollout.

Can AI tools be billed to insurance carriers?

It depends on the carrier's billing guidelines and the tool. ABA Formal Opinion 512 allows lawyers to bill actual time spent and treats some AI costs as billable expenses and others as overhead. Some carriers approve specific tools as reimbursable. For example, one national carrier approved newcase.ai as a reimbursable expense for panel firms.

The bottom line

DRI 2026 will have plenty of AI on the program. The firms that leave with an advantage will be the ones that tested every tool against the same standard and priced their work around what they learned.